The minutes of the June 6, 2001 general membership meeting
were approved with one correction: In the line “Special Collections has
received the Richard Romiger Papers”, Romiger should be spelled Rominger.

Announcements (Gail Nichols): Chair Nichols introduced Ruth
Gustafson (Biological and Agricultural Sciences Reference Department) and Cory
Craig (Physical Sciences and Engineering Library). Chair Nichols thanked the
Program Committee for its work in putting on the Fall Reception. She reminded
everyone of the upcoming Statewide LAUC Fall Assembly, to be held at UCD on
Friday, November 16. Myron Okata will attend, and he can speak to matters like
the budget for UC libraries in light of the recent economic downturn. Karl
Kocher will be given the LAUCD Distinguished Librarian award; a celebration is
planned for early next year.

University Librarian’s Report (Marilyn Sharrow): The new
Provost, Virginia Hinshaw, gave an address at the Faculty Authors event at Shields.
There were twelve excellent speakers. A Literary Dinner was held featuring AUL
Clinton Howard, speaking on the Radical Pamphlets Collection in Special
Collections. The Morley Group of Indianapolis has been hired by the library as
a librarian recruitment firm; it is involved in eight of our librarian searches
at present. The budget picture is worsening. There is talk of a budget and
hiring freeze, but so far it is only rumor. George Bynon estimated that there
will be a one-time cut to the University “in the six figures” followed by a
“permanent” five-to-ten-percent cut in FY 2002-2003. The Office of the
President will try to cushion the overall impact for the individual campuses.
UC Merced groundbreaking will take place sometime next year. There will be a
subcommittee of SLASIAC formed to consist of University Librarians to discuss
how to structure largescale paper and electronic holdings. The Annex and the
Special Collections overflow will soon move to a South Davis location, where
there will be much greater space and more modern facilities.

In response to a query, Marilyn agreed to send a current
list of members of the Academic Senate’s Library Committee to Buzz Haughton for
posting on the LAUCD website.

Professional Issues Committee (Myra Appel): PIC had two
charges: to look into University policy as it might relate to individual librarians’
webpages being linked to library webpages. The other charge was to facilitate
discussion about recruiting and retraining new librarians new to the
profession. PIC has researched University policy regarding use of University
web space for librarians’ personal webpages. Insofar as librarians’ personal
webpages have to do with professional development issues, they meet University
policy limiting use of campus communication networks to “support and promote
the mission of the University,” but that strictly personal pages unrelated to
professional activities might not. In the latter case, PIC recommends that
pages be linked to the library-approved professional webpage template with a
simple highlighted button entitled “Personal Page” or “Personal Interests”
without using a library server or UCD seals or logos. The second charge was
discussed at length, expanding into discussion of the value of the MLS degree
and the role subject expertise and advanced degrees played in the development
of academic librarians. Several ideas emerged, among them the idea of
mentoring. (The 2000-2001 PIC annual report is at: http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/LAUCD/ProfessionalIssues/PIC.html)

Program Committee (Gail Nichols for Erin Murphy): The Picnic
Day Open House went very well. The lunch chats have been lightly attended.
There was a suggestion not to schedule these chats at the Silo due to the slow
service there.

Research Committee (Nancy Kushigian): There is about $1,000
in the divisional budget. Requests for grant support to the divisional Research
Committee may be turned in at any time.

Review Board (Karen Andrews): The Review Board had an
extraordinarily large number of reviews to study last year, including those of
some librarians whose ’99-’00 reviews were eligible for another review. Karen
raised some questions that came up during the Review Board’s deliberations:
What is the purpose of the Statement of Responsibility? Should librarians be encouraged
to request redactions? What are the criteria for the Distinguished Step? The
RB’s work was impeded by lack of the last in this list. Myra Appel mentioned
that when she was at UCR librarians were encouraged to write statements of
progress made, which helped them organize their arguments for merit increases
and/or promotions.

Chair Nichols took Karen Andrews’ comments and passed them
to Patsy Inouye, chair of the Peer Review Documents Review Committee (for whose
work so far written down see: http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/LAUCD/prdcfirst.html).
That committee’s work continues.

Mentoring of New Librarians (Gail Nichols): Chair Nichols
mentioned that Karen Andrews has agreed to chair a mentoring committee. John
Sherlock gave some of the highlights of the Librarian Recruitment and Retention
Task Force (see http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/LAUCD/LRR/index.html).
Karen outlined several components of what a good mentoring program should
encompass. Patsy Inouye stated her preference for more informal mentoring
meetings, perhaps on a monthly basis. Ruth Gustafson drew on her experience at
UCSD: tours of the campus libraries provided by the reference coordinators were
quite successful. Annie Lin expressed her favor for brown-bag get-togethers and
mentioned that as a comparatively new librarian she has been confused by the
plethora of acronyms and initialisms that we UCD librarians bandy about. Buzz
Haughton volunteered to compile a glossary of as many of these acronyms and
initialisms as he can gather together and post them on the LAUCD website. Patsy
Inouye said that there is already a glossary of many of the statewide LAUC
acronyms and initialisms posted on the statewide LAUC site; Buzz will create an
appropriate link from our web page to statewide LAUC’s.

Ruth Gustafson asked LAUCD members to refer names of
potential speakers to her as a member of the Program Committee.